Creating a website for a home business

I use yahoo site builder.
for 9.00 a month my site is hosted and setting it up is easy.

I drop and drag my photos , my text and I can create any look I want.

if you want to peek at it, my site is melissasphotographs.com
add www to that..

Thanks for the suggestion shewolf, and that's a great website you have there (are they ur photos?) Is it possible to add the buying option to that? Adding paypal or whatever and a list of products?

I'd also like to add a blog to this website (maybe 'about me') and possibly a section for photography, perhaps just a brief insight into my friend's photography business (which he is yet to have started) but just to get people interested in his and perhaps some of my photography while they're browsing.

I'd like to add advertisments to the blog page to hopefully get a bit more money, etc etc.

I used sitekreator for mine-- $8/month. Quite a few site designs to pick from, you just fill in one of their templates. not difficult to set up, and I know you can have a blog and/or a forum and I *think* you can set up a paypal button & shopping cart, but I'm not positive on that part.

Click on my "www" link down at the bottom of my post if you want to see my site... You can get to sitekreator's site from there too and see what you think of their deals, there's a link to them at the bottom of the page.

bookmark

(cyphercat, I love your illustrations!)

Thanks, Tai!

Honeyrose, on the domain name side of things, I don't know a lot about it, but I can tell you how I went about it...

First thing I did, way before I was ready to actually build my site, was to buy the domain name I wanted-- I was really set on getting just my actual name, not a business name, so I snapped it up and paid for it for a couple of years without using it, just to be sure I'd have it when I needed it. It cost me about ten dollars to buy it for two years, but the cost varies.

You can buy the domain name before you know where you'll host your site; once you decide what service you'll use to host it, you can just transfer the name to them. So I'd say if you have a domain name you want for sure, buy it as soon as you can and just hang onto it till you're ready to make the site.

Just search something like "buy domain name"...I know you can buy them thru Google, GoDaddy, and AT&T, off the top of my head... but there are lots of places. I bought mine through AT&T 'cause they're my internet provider too, so it was simple to just go through them.

I use weeblydotcom.
It is free, easy to use, has paypal, allows own domain transfer, a blog, images, video, RSS feeds, pure HTML upload (even for your own front page), Search engine optimisation, etc etc etc.

My DIY site is rhymer.weebly.com (a personal site)

Thanks guys. I still don't know what I want my domain to be... Still need a company name for that.. Any help would be appreciated!

I've been having a look at one.com as they offer a setup fee and free other stuff for a year. Eg for the domain etc... Anyone had any experience with them?

The help guy also told me I could download oscommerce(???) which provides a shop structure to work by, and it's free....

Ahh, looked at some reviews for one.com, looks pretty shoddy, so not going with them.. Might just register domain and go from there.